A few years ago, my good friend Chuck and I decided to exchange lists of our 100 favorite songs. The key to the exchange, though, was to really put our 100 favorite songs on there and not the 100 songs we thought should be on the list. If we really thought “Mandy” deserved to be on the list rather than, say, “Heard it Through The Grapevine” or Satisfaction,” then we had to put it on the list, regardless of what we thought it might say about our musical taste.*
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — So I want to tell you about this sweet moment I had here in South Africa, this tiny little moment that I will probably remember longer than I remember anything that happens at the World Cup. But I’m just not sure I can convey it. Isn’t it just like that for the sweet little moments in our lives? Why is it that I so clearly remember sitting next to my father at Cleveland Municipal Stadium and watching him drink a beer out of a waxed paper cup (my father almost never drank beer — it seemed so exotic then) when I can’t remember the name of my sixth grade teacher? Why is it I can remember stumbling out into the white-hot sunlight after the movie ended, holding my mother’s hand as we stumbled through the parking lot looking for the car when I can’t remember what movie we saw? Why is it I can remember shakily walking back and forth in a dark nursery, whispering into my baby daughter’s ear to go to sleep already when I can’t remember my hotel room number? Why do these little memories that would seem so ordinary to anyone else — so ordinary to me even — animate the mind?
Inspired by this, I’m going to put together my list of the Top 100 sports books. Obviously this has been done before … but never by me and the Brilliant Readers of this blog.
My favorite interview of the year so far has to be Sunday’s interview between ESPN’s great Bob Ley and French reporter Erik Bielderman about the hilarious and tragic problems of the French World Cup team. Ley asked Bielderman about the altercation between French striker Nicolas Anelka and coach Raymond Domenech — which led to Ankelka’s dismissal from the team and, the next day, the team’s refusal to practice. That’s quite a team they have going in France these days.
I got a letter once from a football fan in Baltimore who wanted me to know he hated — HATED — the fact that his city had stolen away the Cleveland Browns. He hated it because he remembered what it felt like to lose the Baltimore Colts. He hated it because he knew how much the Browns meant to Cleveland. He hated it because it was wrong, and he knew it was wrong, and if he could have somehow voted against it he would have voted against it.
The great and joyously cranky Charlie Pierce has written a short takedown of Field of Dreams that I would say makes a lot of sense. Charlie continues a theme that I and many others have written about the movie — having Joe Jackson hit right-handed and throw left-handed in the movie is just disturbingly poor baseball history. I actually talked about this once with the late Rod Dedeaux, who served as baseball advisor for the movie, and he explained that no matter how they tried, they simply could not make Ray Liotta look anything like believable hitting left-handed. So they came up with the idea of creating a mirror image of Jackson — with Liotta as Jackson throwing and hitting opposite from real life. A sort of afterlife mirror, if you will. I appreciate that he even tried to defend the travesty. It should be noted that Liotta didn’t look any good hitting right-handed either.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this … I’m on a diet again. This is the one. Of course, I’ve said that before, but the way I figure it, I’m at that age where I’m either: (A) Going to take a stand or (B) Going to start wearing sweat pants a lot. Of course, like in my media poll, there probably should be an option (C) which is this case would be “Both.” But, as you will see in an upcoming post, I’m beginning to believe less and less in Option C. Anyway, that’s for another time.
OK, so my daughters have fallen under the spell of Gilligan’s Island. The hypnotic powers of Sherwood Schwartz. At first, they were not sure they were going to like it … with the first season being black and white and all. But in the end there’s just something timelessly stupid about Gilligan’s Island, something that even in black and white reaches across generations. My daughters may be growing up in a world of iPads* and Wii game systems and 3D televisions and cars that park themselves, but they like children of my time are helpless against the comedic genius of coconuts falling on the Skipper’s head.
A few years ago, I wrote a column stating that Raef LaFrentz is the most famous “Raef” in American history. This seemed a pretty uncontroversial stance, at least to me, but a big-time editor (rather unconvincingly, in my view) made the argument that he actually was second-most famous … behind Rafer Johnson.
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